Bitumen Bubble

Miracles do happen, or something close to them, Marie Renaud said Saturday at a remarkably well-attended Alberta New Democratic Party meeting in St. Albert's community recreation centre.

Renaud -- who was acclaimed as the NDP candidate for the St. Albert riding -- was referring to the inspiring stories of some of the disabled adults she's worked with in her 14 years as executive director of St. Albert’s non-profit LoSeCa Foundation, a community-based organization that employs 150 people, many of them with developmental disabilities.

With a five per cent cut to post secondary education institutions rumoured to be looming as part of Premier Jim Prentice's share-the-pain solution to the recent drop in oil prices, one wonders what Thomas Lukaszuk will have to say to Stephen Mandel in the privacy of the Tory caucus room.

Guess what, we're broke again out here in The Richest Place on Earth! ™

Yesterday, citing the spectacular recent drop in oil prices, Alberta Premier Jim Prentice pulled his Grim Reaper's hood over his head, took up his scythe and headed out to, in the words of his government's press release, "take action to control spending."

Target No. 1 of his newly formed seven-minister "Budget 2015 committee," according to the press release: "Public sector compensation."

No one can say Rachel Notley hasn't upped the Alberta NDP's game since she was elected party leader in October.

Yesterday, the provincial New Democrats put out a biting public statement on their proposed amendments to Premier Jim Prentice's so-called Alberta Accountability Act that was funny enough to make me laugh out loud.

The Progressive Conservative government's Bill 2, as noted in this space earlier today, seems to have been designed mainly for show to smooth over the horrible impression left by the scandals that erupted under the leadership of former premier Alison Redford.

Just when you think you're finding your way out of the woods, there's that damned Bitumen Bubble again.

This time, it's crude oil prices that are declining -- or, as they say in journalese, the official language of the Internet, "plummeting."

This is handy for conservatives once they're elected and want to cut the crap out of public services they promised to protect, but not so good in the lead-up to an election during the phase when conservative governments of all stripes go into a tax-and-spend-liberal-spree mode and shower dollars on electors.

Yesterday was the day we were all supposed to be in agog at how Alberta is awash in cash again -- a long-predicted lottery win for which the governing Progressive Conservative Party understandably if unjustifiably intended to take full credit.

Instead, the capital city's principal newspaper apparently didn't even write a separate news story about the government's upbeat first-quarter financial report, but rolled it into a political column about all the scandals plaguing the PCs less than two weeks before they’re scheduled to choose a new leader to help them find a way out of the political wilderness.

Perhaps it's time to just come right out and state the obvious: If Tory leadership front-runner Jim Prentice wants even a few of Alberta's badly burned progressive voters to give his so-called Progressive Conservative Party their consideration one more time, he's going to have to do more than make promises.

If there was any real news from yesterday's news conference atop the Chateau Lacombe Hotel in downtown Edmonton, at which Progressive Conservative former Edmonton mayor Stephen Mandel endorsed Progressive Conservative future Alberta premier Jim Prentice, it was not spoken aloud.

Here is the latest installment in our continuing series of commentaries celebrating the 50th anniversary of the publication of Mel Watkins' classic article, "A Staple Theory of Economic Growth." This commentary is from Mel's long-time collaborator Thomas Gunton, Director of the Resource and Environmental planning Program at Simon Fraser University. Gunton's submission, supplemented by an extensive bibliography, applies staples analysis to the current boom in resource-oriented petroleum developments